Director of Accounting

Allium makes blockchain data accurate simple and fast

Blockchain data is hard messy and chaotic

When we started out in late 2021 our thesis was simple - blockchain data despite it being public and free was difficult to understand clunky to access and troublesome to maintain. Answering a simple question like “Who are the biggest Ethereum token holders over time?” requires an engineering team to run their own RPC nodes ingest the full history of the blockchain clean the data transform the data and finally summon a wizard to cast a complex SQL query.

Accessing data is hard because blockchains are optimized for Writes and not Reads

Why is it so hard? Blockchains have historically been optimized for Writes (getting data onto the blockchain) and less for Reads (getting data OUT of the blockchain). This is because optimization efforts were focused on increasing transaction throughput and building fault tolerant and scalable consensus algorithms. This neglect makes it hard to get data out efficiently and reliably at scale.

Parsing and interpreting blockchain data requires both deep domain expertise and data manipulation

To quote Tim Roughgarden Columbia Professor “Blockchains are (virtual) computers not databases.” They are Turing machines that support general computations and anyone can write and deploy their own smart contract for their own use case. This nearly infinite number of use cases leads to the fragmentation of data schemas for different purposes. Standardizing these schemas requires deep domain expertise to turn esoteric technical outputs into clear information for specific concepts like tokens NFTs stablecoins and DEXs.

Allium abstracts the complexity with a simple way to query blockchain data

Allium tames the chaos by ingesting sanitizing and standardizing all this data. As of this post the data we’ve archived across 100+ blockchains is in the petabytes and growing exponentially.

Google and Bloomberg had to organize the world's public financial and webpage data Allium is on a mission to do the same for blockchain data

This is one of the rare times in history where indexing a giant public dataset is sorely needed by all - similar to what Bloomberg did for financial data and what Google organized for public webpage data. With this indexed data we are fortunate to support trailblazers in this industry and play some role the industry’s most exciting trends:

About our customers

We serve 2 groups of customers today with the same data but different platform. Analysts who need to answer data questions about the blockchain (think BI) and Engineers who need highly reliable data queryable in near realtime (think Application backends). Our customers include the biggest institutions Visa Stripe Grayscale and also the biggest crypto companies such as Phantom Uniswap. Allium is one of the unique companies in the industry that bridge blockchain and non blockchain worlds.

The Role

Allium is hiring its first in-house Director of Accounting / Controller to manage and build the accounting function from the ground up.

You will own the integrity of our financials: driving a fast reliable close enforcing clean reconciliations and making sure leadership can actually run the business off the numbers. This is not a back office scorekeeper role - you're expected to operate like an owner design the systems and turn accounting outputs into real operating leverage.

You'll report to the VP Finance and partner closely with Revenue Operations GTM and Leadership as we continue scaling and prepare for later-stage audits and financing.

What You’ll Do

Own the close and core accounting

• Run a fast accurate monthly/quarterly/annual close across US and international entities (targeting a 5 day close).

• Own revenue recognition for SaaS usage-based billing and data contracts under US GAAP / ASC 606 and keep all balance sheet accounts fully reconciled and documented

• Build and enforce robust controls across quote-to-cash lifecycle (order forms renewals co-terms credits terminations)

Lead tax payroll and compliance

• Own coordination and review of all tax filings with external advisors: income tax sales/use tax and other indirect tax across relevant jurisdictions

• Oversee payroll and payroll accounting and reconciliations (US + international) ensuring accuracy of gross-to-net benefits and employer taxes

• Implement and maintain compliance processes for statutory reporting entity governance and cross-border arrangements

Own working capital controls and audit (AP/AR policies SBC)

• Oversee AP and vendor management and AR/billing operations

• Design and operate internal controls over financial reporting and own key accounting policies (T&E capitalization crypto assets tax payroll etc.)

• Lead audit prep and interactions; maintain a clean audit trail for revenue tax intercompany and other key areas so the company is diligence-ready at all times.

About you

• 8-12+ years total experience in accounting/finance including a mix of Big 4 / top-tier public accounting and high growth startup experience

  • Prior experience as a Controller Assistant Controller or Head of Accounting at a SaaS or data/infra company

• Deep knowledge of US GAAP and ASC 606. Comfortable taking a position documenting it and defending it to auditors

• Strong NetSuite experience

• Able to design and enforce data flows between Salesforce billing and the GL without relying on consultants for every change

• Nice to Have

  • Experience with crypto

  • Multi-entity and cross-border structures (e.g. US parent with foreign subsidiaries).

  • Supporting or leading first-time audits data-room prep and later-stage financing processes

  • Comfortable working with highly technical teams (data infra engineering) and translating between product realities and accounting requirements

• Embodies Allium’s values - Extreme Ownership High Agency and Strong Opinions (Loosely Held)

Don't take our word for it what our customers say about us ( https://www.allium.so/blog#love)

What some ~cool people have to say about us:

• Mario Gabriele from The Generalist's Future 50 Startup List: https://www.allium.so/post/allium-named-awardee-of-the-generalists-inaugural-future-50-startups

• Tomasz Tungus from Theory Ventures: https://tomtunguz.com/allium/

• Bucky Moore from Kleiner Perkins: https://www.kleinerperkins.com/perspectives/allium-series-a/

Ok.. now for some tough love here are the values we strive for at Allium:

• Pro Athlete Mindset - Consistency. Day in and day out in pursuit of excellence. A win yesterday does not guarantee (or even imply!) a win tomorrow. I hope anyone who supports a failing sports team will feel the pain ( cough Man United fan s) of inconsistency

• Figure It Out & Extreme Ownership - Every day is unexplored territory. There are new engineering frameworks new legal docs new compliance new sales new regulations and new operational procedures every single day. If you don’t know it learn it. If you can’t learn it find someone or a product that does it. If you can’t find someone find someone who can find someone. It is never lack of resources but lack of resourcefulness.

• High Agency - (One of) the highest commonality between all successful people is their responsiveness most successful billionaire CEOs still reply to emails within minutes (within working hours). And when you reply respond fast with effective solutions - and even better resolutions. If you’re looking for a superpower you can’t go wrong with responsiveness. Well of course this doesn't make sense when you're an engineer coding in flow but in general high agency of problem solving gets one very far in life

• Leading from the Front - No one is going to listen (and adopt) your suggestion unless you lead by example. It’s one thing to say We need to do XYZ this better & it’s another thing to build an MVP and say “This is the way we should do things”. The proof of work and momentum goes a long way.

• Strong Opinions On the Future (loosely held) It is okay to be wrong but what is not okay is not to have an idea of how a better future should be. Alliumites take pride in trying to improving everything about the company all the time.

• Sense of (allium) business smell - There are number of folks who live to eat at Allium but the Allium smell we are talking about is that we love folks who naturally want to know why and how the work they are doing builds leverage for their teammates and also relates to the business goals

About the team

We invite people of all backgrounds ( https://www.allium.so/about ). We have engineers who learnt coding much later in life who learnt coding on the side we have engineers who are still in school and we also have engineers who went to the top schools (CMU Stanford UIUC UPenn Oxford NUS Cornell) all are welcome if one comes in with a curious mind and an infectious work ethic.

Administrative Benefits

• Medical Dental Vision Life and AD&D insurance - US folks get 100% coverage for Gold plans 80% for dependents

• Ownership - Meaningful early-stage equity. Every full-time employee receives a stock option grant so you can share directly in Allium's upside

• Time off - Flexible trust-based paid time off. We encourage people to take the rest they need. In every country we hire our policies meet or exceed local statutory vacation requirements

• Retirement - Company sponsored 401(k) plan in US so you can save pre-tax for the long term

Note: The sun never sets on Allium - we hire from any geographical location as long as you are willing to overlap 2 hours overlap on NYC mornings Mon-Thurs from 10am-12pm ET. We have people based in New York Seattle Singapore and Australia

All applicants have to answer this pop quiz: ' What is an Allium? What is your favorite Allium? '. Bonus points for the right pronunciation.